Microduino: Arduino in your pocket, small, stackable, smart

$134,563

1,474

MICRODUINO FEATURED IN...

MICRODUINO IS...

The Microduino series is a 100% Arduino compatible open source hardware, compatible with Arduino IDE development environment and existing Arduino sketches.

MICRODUINO IS SMALL

Microduino is small. Its size is about a quarter (25.40mm X 27.94mm / 1.0inch X 1.1inch), much smaller than the original Arduino board.

MICRODUINO IS STACKABLE

All Microduino boards adopt a uniform U-shape 27-pin standard pin-out (UPin-27). Thus Microduino series can be easily stacked together through the UPin-27, and all modules are delivered ready to stack.

Microduino configures the pinout usage table well so as to avoid any pin usage conflict between different extension modules.

MICRODUINO IS OPENSOURCE

We've benefitted from the open source community, and we're dedicated to giving back. The Microduino is a totally open source hardware product. you can get all of our hardware design files (schematic, board design) and firmware from Microduino WIKI http://wiki.Microduino.cc

MICRODUINO IS CHEAP

Once you upload an Arduino compatible program onto the Microduino, you don't need Microduino-FT232R anymore. You can just put Microduino-Core into your system. One -FT232R module can be reused in different applications.

Also there are various Microduino pin-out compatible (UPin-27) extension modules available with low price (check details below), which decreases prototyping and production cost.

MAKE COOL THINGS WITH MICRODUINOS

With its tiny shape, the Microduino series dramatically decreases the size and cost of prototyping, while also remarkably improving usability and flexibility of Arduino-compatible boards, as well as user experience.

Microduinos are smart, small and stackable. With various Microduino extension modules, designers can easily make many different kinds of applications.

Here are some existing Microduino designs which are already applied by designers.

Microduino-Gate for Web of things

A WOT network gate is a hub for distributed sensor nodes. Different kinds of sensor nodes collect environment information, like temperature, humidity, pressure and so on. All such kind of information will transfer to network gate. Microduino hub processes all information and puts it to internet as you wish.

Microduino-Wireless Gate for Web of things

If you want to make the WOT network wireless, you just need to stack a Microduino-nRF24 to your system. If adding extra Microduino-SD module, you would be able to record environment information offline.

Microduino-MusicBox

Microduino-LM4863 is a D-Class amplifier, popular and high quality digital amplifier. Integrate into your application to build a cool design!

To smart your room, use your cell phone to control water machine, curtain, or switch lamp when you are not physically in your room. An open source software is also provided to help you build your own smart room system.

Microduino-SmartGarden

Smart your garden? Want to conserve water and energy, to switch off the air-conditioner, ventilation fan, and turn off the tap remotely? It's easy to realize with Micrdouinos.

These are just a few of the projects that Microduino community members have built in past one year. We'll be sharing these ideas, and any others we dream up in the future. We hope you'll do the same!

Stack them and play, here we go!

THE IDEA BEHIND MICRODUINO

The Idea behind Microduino is dividing Arduino-Uno circuit into 2 functional parts: Microduino-Core and Microduino-FT232R. The -Core part is an Arduino minimum system board, and -FT232R is for signal communication between PC and -Core for sketches uploading and debugging.

Microduino is structured as a uniform U-Shaped 27 pinout (UPin-27). All Microduino boards adopt the UPin-27. Hence every Microduino can be easily stacked together.

MICRODUINO CORE MODULES

We defined Microduino modules as "Core Modules" and "Extension Modules", a "Core Module" means Ardunio minimum system board and USB2TTL boards. There are currently 3 "Core Modules" in Microduino series.

Microduino-Core

Microduino-Core is core board of Microduino series. Its main chip is ATmega328P, and it's completely compatible with Arduino Uno, the same hardware architecture as the Uno. You can just select the board type as "Arduino Uno" in the Arduino-IDE, when uploading programs/sketches onto the Microduino-Core.

Microduino-Core+ is a performance edition Microduino series, another core board of Microduino series. Its main chip is ATmega644PA and its performance matches that of the Arduino Mega2560. Microduino-Core+ provides 2 hardware serial ports and 10 more digital I/O.

To use Microduino-Core+ in Arduino IDE environment, you must patch the Microduino Arduino IDE hardware package. You can find a tutorial on the Microduino wiki page to guide you step by step.

Both Microduino-Core and Microduino-Core+ use UPin-27 -- the standard pinout of Microduino series. The main difference between them is the core chip: Microduino-Core module uses ATmega328P or ATmega168PA which is the same as in Arduino Uno. However the Microduino-Core+ module uses ATmega644PA or ATmega1284P, and its performance matches that of the Arduino Mega2560.

Designers can select proper modules according to their application requirements in terms of function, performance and power.

In Kickstarter, Microduino-Core (328P/5V/16M) and Microduino-Core+ (644PA/5V/16M) are provided. Other version will be supplied in Microduino webstore around Dec/2013.

Microduino-FT232R

Microduino-FT232R is a USB2TTL module for connecting PC with the Microduino and uploading programs/ sketches onto the Core/Core+.

Microduino-[BT] is Microduino BT Shield. There are two versions: BT2.1 and BT4.0, we will supply -[BT] 4.0 version in Kickstarter campaign by default, if you want -[BT] 2.1 version, please comment it during survey when we accomplish this campaign.

We plan to finish mass testing of the above boards (-LM4863, -CC3000, -RTC, -NEO6M, -A3906, -A4982) around September 2013.

MICRODUINO SHIELDS AND ACCESSORIES

Stacking boards together is a good idea. However, when your system becomes complex, you don't want to stack too many Microduino modules with increased height. In order to decrease stack height without sacrificing functions and to make design elegant, Microduino shield boards are provided.

Microduino-Solo (Test Boards)

Microduino-Solo is a test board for Microduino.

All Microduino pins are brought out to the peripheral of Microduino-Solo. It's easy for designer to tune pins and debug circuit connection. A 5.0V to 3.3V DC-DC regulator is embedded to provide two voltage levels. A Jumper can be used to switch the supply power.

Microduino-Duo board

A Duo-board connects two UPin-27 pinout together. We designed two types of Duo boards, which respectively connect Microduinos in two directions -- vertical and horizontal. They are named as Microduino-VDuo (1x2 mode) and Microduino-HDuo (2x1 mode).

An Arduino pinout shield is also provided in Microduino series to match Arduino pinout. It's an interface switch board between Microduino and Arduino.

Microduino-Uno shield is designed for multiple purposes:

1. If you are new to Microduino, or know little about Arduino, please use this board to start your Microduino adventure. By just stacking Microduino-Core and Microduino-FT232R on this shield, you can get equivalent Arduino-Uno and then leverage world-wide Arduino community technical resource to learn Microduino.

2. Well, the idea of Microduino is really nice and you just want to try it out. If you already have many Arduino extension shields, it's not efficient to get rid of all of them. No problem, try Microduino-Uno Shield, with which you can connect Microduino and Arduino together.

3. The last scenario - you already have an Arduino board. Obviously, Microduino extension modules are more economic than other Arduino extension boards. By just stacking Microduino-Uno shield on to your existing Arduino Board, you can easily stack Microduino extension modules, and begin to use the power of them.

Microduino Fritzing library

For better experiencing Microduino, Microduino team designed a series Fritzing library, you can share your idea with Microduino in a nice way.

MICRODUINO TEAM

Microduino studio is a
team of engineers, designers and innovators. We have the expertise to
complete this project, and to make Microduino a reality. Microduino studio is also a team crossing China
and U.S. Many people have been involved in various ways, but the core team
is as follows:

Chunbai (CB) ZHANG: Microduino Studio Co-Founder, CTO, Microduino inventor. With over
10 years device design and development experience, he’s focusing on Microduino
series development, testing and production. He’s a soul of Microduino community. People are calling him "teacher Zhang" for his extensive knowledge in
this area.

Bin FENG: Microduino Studio Co-Founder, CMO, Microduino project manager. With Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Materials, Master’s degree in EE, and Over ten years project managing
experience, he has a passion for Microduino and is highly motivated to make the US market
a huge success.

We work closely with Beijing Makerspace to
share our amazing products with this community and to get user experience feedback
and more application ideas. Moreover, we practice,
design, innovate new ideas, and advocate our efforts in cool things like Microduino. Joanna WEI, the executive director of Beijing MakerSpace, is helping with Microduino social media campaigns. The goal is to encourage social innovation and develop the open-source hardware ecosystem by building a physical and online community in China.

MICRODUINO PLEDGE PLAN

Microduino modules have been designed, developed, prototyped and tested. Right now, we only share our small adorable boards within Microduino community, in which there are around 700 geeks from China, Europe and US. We organize the community through http://www.weibo.com/Microduino (China Twitter) and QQ discussion group "123972320" (China IM).

Although hardware product costs more money, with your support, we can start mass production. So we can share the tiny powerful boards with more designers around the world. Once we successfully achieve pledge target, we will start shipping modules that you back.

TIME LINE

Most Microduino modules are ready for manufacturing, the factory is only waiting for the final quantity; that will be available at the end of this campaign, so the production will start immediately after this campaign is over, 10th of October.

We've organized the whole process to be completed in only 35 days.

During the first 10 days (in best case, it will only take 7 days), the PCB manufacturer will create the boards and execute the electronic tests. At the same time, the sourcing office will order and collect all the components.

Starting from the 20th of October the manufacturing plant will run the SMT assembling, the manual soldering of the components that are not surface mounted, and the finshing of the boards. This factory has produced Arduino compatible boards before, so they have experience and knowledge to perform these tasks properly.

At the same time, we will start to prepare all the materials for shipping.

15 days after the end of the campaign the Microduino boards will be ready for quality control and testing. The boards need to be programmed with a special test software that we've designed, tested and then programmed again to be ready to work with your computer.

Starting from the 11th of November we will be able to ship your rewards, but we want to keep a window open for possible delays, so we plan to complete the whole project by the December in the worst case.

In case the interest we receive is higher than what we expect (let's say many times the goal) the production time will not be much longer and we can upgrade the output capacity up to 500 orders a day.

THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS

First off, thank you! We hope you're excited about the Microduinos We hope you'll back our project and help us make our brilliant ideas come true.

Special thanks to a number of people that have been an enormous help: Yeelink.net, geek-workshop.com, KeJia Pan, Yongxin Yu (Citywall Brick), Stanley Huang, Fei Song (Southwolf), Shiying Liu (ranger), Wenbo Ju, Wallen Mphepo, Tuananh Pham, Chris Momo, JiaQi Guan, and every team member in Microduino community.

ENJOY YOUR MICRODUINO JOURNEY!

Risks and challenges

A project of Hardware product is always challenging.

Fortunately, our product development risk is minimum. Most Microduino series boards have been designed, developed, prototyped and tested by Microduino community and used for many applications. The design and the production's specifications are ready. As soon as the project receives 100% of the funding, we will start production, even before the end of the campaign.

We also plan to test the remaining 5 modules to ensure the stability and performance from production. They have already passed our internal testing. If everything goes well with production testing, we will deliver the kits to you by the end of October. Otherwise, we will refine the design and start our product shipment in November 2013; it's still within our schedule.

The second challenge is from manufacturing. We have to make sure our mass production can efficiently manufactures reliable modules. During the past one year, we have already established close relationship with our manufacturing partner in Shenzhen, China, who has been manufacturing high quality modules for us. In addition, we have another manufacturer in Beijing, China as a backup which one of our team members has been using for years. They both have already been proven highly capable, therefore manufacturing risk is minimized. Nonetheless, there are still risks associated with producing the Microduino. We are working hard to mitigate those risks and plan to be transparent throughout the process.

The third risk is from physical delivery. We plan to work with proven companies to help ensure that your rewards arrive on time in perfect condition. In case of unforeseen circumstances, we will try our best to overcome any difficulties.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

MICRODUINO 001 KIT -- MICRODUINO CUSTOM KIT: Select your favorite modules/quantities combo, and count total price by yourself according to Microduino Kickstarter edition price list http://wiki.microduino.cc/index.php?title=Microduino_Kickstarter_Pledge_List#MICRODUINO_PLEDGE_PLAN ; Please make sure you calculate a correct number, contact us if you have any question, otherwise we will pack the microduinos combo by our understanding according to the money you paid.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $200 or more
About $200

MICRODUINO 000 KIT -- MICRODUINO CUSTOM KIT: Select your favorite modules/quantities combo, and count total price by yourself according to Microduino Kickstarter edition price list http://wiki.microduino.cc/index.php?title=Microduino_Kickstarter_Pledge_List#MICRODUINO_PLEDGE_PLAN ; Please make sure you calculate a correct number, contact us if you're confused, Otherwise we will pack the microduinos combo by our understanding according to the money you paid.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,600 or more
About $1,600

MICRODUINO 1024 KIT -- PERSONALIZED MICRODUINO BOARDS: You will reward "Microduino 908 Full Kit", in the same time, we will modify a custom "Microduino 908 Full Kit" (above) sepcifically for you -- a set of Microduino boards to your specification -- you choose the board color, the text you want to show up, personalized logos, and we'll make them how you want it.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $3,200 or more
About $3,200

MICRODUINO 2048 KIT -- MICRODUINO CUSTOM SHIELD: You come up with your own Shield, we'll make it, give you 5 copies, release it to the public and smack your name right on that board. Includes everything from the "MICRODUINO 908 KIT" (above). NOTE: The shield must be at least reasonably feasible.